As the founding headmaster of Saint Ann’s, Mr. Bosworth envisioned an academically rigorous school for the gifted, from pre-school through high school, with no grades and few rules. Along with standard courses like Shakespeare and Chinese, there are puppetry classes. For years, the school had a smoking lounge for students. Its own literature calls the place an “amusement park” whose attractions were Aristophanes, Darwin and Baudelaire.
Why no grades? “How do you give a grade on an oboe’s sweet, beautiful sound?” Mr. Bosworth said in an interview with New York magazine in 2004 after announcing he would retire at 76. That article, titled “The Devil and Saint Ann’s,” illustrated Mr. Bosworth’s penchant for pungent, provocative commentary. In it, he told parents not to worry about students sleeping together. “If they’re affectionate, they’re affectionate!” he said.
Mr. Bosworth could be paradoxical in a single phrase, as when he said he was really the person he pretended to be. But when asked if he found anything satisfying about getting older, he was unmistakably straightforward. “I have the satisfaction of seeing people I hate die!” he said.
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